Crown of the Serpent

by Allen Wold

  The floor here was smooth steel, dusty and unmarked. The ceiling was also steel, with nothing that might have been light fixtures. The walls were ribbed as in the hatchway above. Aside from that, the ramp, which continued to spiral as it descended, had no features whatsoever. But after one full turn all the goons came to a sudden halt.

  "What's the matter?" Rikard asked.

  "We've lost contact with the shuttle," Sukiro told him.

  One of the specialties of the goon forces was their built-in communications linkage system, but it worked only between a goon and a larger transmitter-receiver, on a Police craft or space station, not between goons directly. The goons depended on their corn-links to provide them with the location and condition of their fellows, communications with their officers, and other status information. They could operate without the system, but with much reduced efficiency.

  It was Sukiro's decision, however, to go on. She went back up the ramp until she regained contact, and told the shuttle crew what had happened and that they would be continuing down in spite of this.

  After two full turns the floor became a level passage, which continued for a short way before ending at a large, slightly oval door with an iris valve, like the inner door of an airlock. There were panels on either side of the iris, which might have been manual controls, but instead of trying to figure them out, Sla-den and Petorska just went to work with their pry bars. When the valves were open just the barest crack air whistled into the evacuated chamber. It stopped after a moment, then the goons forced the doors open the rest of the way.

  The large chamber beyond was a kind of vestibule, with an­other doorway at the opposite end, and half-meter-high plat­forms at either side on which sat two rather large complicated objects which, by their presence, might have been space cars though, from their shapes, could have been almost anything. In the steel-ribbed walls above the platforms were dark blue panels, six on either side, taller than broad, outlined in white, each with a silvery button in the middle. Rikard was eager to go in and explore, but Corporal Falyn put out a restraining hand, and they all waited while Jasime tested the air.

  It took the private only a moment. The atmosphere inside the derelict station proved to be an oxygen-nitrogen-C02 mix, with a few other gases, but otherwise quite breathable—nothing toxic, very low organic component, and not very dusty. On Jasime's okay the goons opened their face-plates, and Rikard and Grayshard shed their encumbering vac-suits and stowed them into small backpacks, though they kept on their light­weight helmets with the built-in headlamps. Rikard let his gloved right hand rest lightly on the butt of his .75, and felt a lot better about this whole business. The vac-suit glove didn't let the circuit close between him and the gun, but now he was in control again.

  Denny took over the lead and they all moved cautiously into the vestibule. The ceiling here was not steel but plastic, amber in color, and transparent, though they could see nothing embed­ded within the six centimeters or so of its depth.

  Rikard went at once to one of the machines parked on a side platform, half a meter above the floor. In general form it looked like a cross between a bobsled and an apple peeler, with parts that reminded him of a naked power generator, or maybe a torsion exercise cycle. There were no coverings or enclosures of any kind. He reached out for what could have been either con­trol buttons or ornamentation on a pedestal near the middle of the device.

  "Don't touch that," Denny said.

  Rikard glanced at her, then took his hands away, and con­templated instead the silvery button in the center of the nearest blue panel.

  "We have no time for that now," Denny said. She went to the door at the far end of the vestibule, dark blue and outlined in white, oval like the one by which they had come in, taller than broad, and sealed with an iris, at the center of which was what could have been a touch-plate latch.

  Rikard stared at the sergeant's back for a moment, then touched the panel button anyway. There was a soft click as it swung open a centimeter or two.

  Denny heard the sound and turned to stare back at him. "Leave those things alone," she snapped. "You'll have plenty of time to explore after we get rid of the raiders."

  "Denny's right," Sukiro said. "Penetrate first, we may have very little time."

  Rikard nodded reluctant agreement, and went to stand beside Denny as she examined the silver disk at the center of the door iris. "Seems simple enough," he said.

  She glared at him, then reached out and pressed the plate. The iris, touch-plate and all, twisted open, then closed again with a snap, so quickly that all they saw was the movement.

  Denny belatedly jerked her hand away, rubbed her gauntleted palms together, looked over her shoulder as if to summon a goon to do this experiment for her, then reached out and touched the plate again. Once again the iris snapped open and shut in a fraction of a second. She turned to Petorska. "Let me have your prybar," she said.

  But while her back was turned Rikard just put out his hand and pressed the plate, hard enough so that, when the iris opened, his hand went through. And this time, with his arm extended to the elbow in the place where the iris had been, the door stayed open, Denny, with the prybar, turned back to see him wiggling his fingers in the blackness beyond.

  "Damn fool thing to do," she said. Her voice was anxious, as if she had expected to see his arm cut off at the elbow. Rikard pulled his arm back, and when his hand was clear the valve immediately snapped shut.

  "It's got a sensor," he said. "I think." He pushed the plate again, and again, for as long as he held his hand in the door­way, the iris stayed open, and snapped shut as soon as he took his hand away. He looked at Denny, grinned, then opened the iris one more time and stepped through into the darkness. The iris snapped shut behind him.

  He played his headlamp around the room. It was different from the vestibule. It had the same amber, transparent ceiling, but the floor was milky white and the walls were pale blue, with two triple stripes of dark blue, the same color as the doors, running around them at waist and shoulder height from the floor. But before he could make out any details the iris opened again.

  Sergeant Denny stepped halfway through the opening and to one side, legs astride the threshold, to keep the valve open while the rest of her squad entered the room as quickly as possible.

  "Let's move it," she said, and the other goons followed at once, with Gray shard and Sukiro bringing up the rear.

  It wasn't a very large room, and they had to crowd around a square table in the center to all fit in. The table had a matte black surface, and stood on a single pedestal leg. There were no chairs.

  There was a counter, also matte black and about one meter high, over cabinets that ran along one side wall except where another door cut through it. There was a third door in the far wall, and on the other side wall what looked like a viewscreen with a control panel of some kind beneath it.

  Rikard went to the side door and touched the latch-plate in the center of the iris. The door snapped open and shut, as quickly and as startlingly as the first had done.

  Denny finally left her post astride the doorjamb. The iris snapped closed, she touched the plate, and they watched it snap again. "Just making sure we could get out," she said.

  "It can't be purely mechanical," Rikard said, "or it wouldn't work so fast. That means there has to be power in here."

  "Can't be," Denny said. "This derelict has to be at least ten thousand years old."

  "But the doors do open and close," Corporal Falyn said. "And besides, how do you account for the artificial gravity?"

  While the two noncoms were arguing, Rikard opened one of the dark blue cabinet doors under the counter. Inside were shelves filled with what looked like containers, made of card or metal foil or plastic, in neutral colors, but all of strange sizes, shapes, and proportions.

  "Don't open any of those," Denny said, but she came over to look too. "The air may be good," she went on, "but we don't know what kind of volatile substances might be inside those thi
ngs."

  Rikard was, in fact, just about to break open the corner of a rusty gray box like a cube, except that none of the angles were square, but thought perhaps he wouldn't after all, and carefully put it down on the counter.

  "We've got to get moving," Sukiro said. "The longer we delay, the more likely the raiders will find out we're here, and we'll lose our surprise." She looked at Rikard. "Which way do we go?"

  "Which way's the hatch we want to get to?" Rikard asked back.

  "Majorbank?" Denny queried.

  The private glanced at the screen on the top surface of his hand-held mapping pad, then touched a button on one side. "We entered facing the other hatch," he said, "and made two full circles coming down. If we keep on going straight ahead, we should get to the area under the raiders' hatch eventually."

  "Then let's get on with it," Sukiro said.

  Denny went to the far door, pressed against the latch-plate, and stepped into the threshold when it opened. Like the well-trained troops they were, her squad was the first through, with­out further orders.

  The room beyond was somewhat larger than the first, with counters along both side walls this time, and three other doors. There was a black-topped table in the middle, and a "view-screen," on the opposite wall. Denny went to the far door and pushed the latch-plate. She stood in the doorway while her goons went through, then signaled the others to follow.

  Beyond was a short transverse corridor, with five doors on either side and one at either end. They'd come in from the second iris from the left. The doors here, like the others they'd seen, were dark blue, outlined in white, and as before there were two rows of triple blue stripes that went around the walls.

  Rikard looked at the place where the stripes intersected the white door outline. There was a set of slightly raised diagonal ridges, right where the blue lines ended. They were uncolored, and Rikard couldn't remember whether he'd seen them next to the. other doors or not. There was a similar set on the other side of the iris.

  "We'll take the door straight across," Denny said. "You got this mapped?" she asked Majorbank.

  "No problem," the goon answered. He entered the informa­tion on his pad using the trackball at the base of its screen.

  Then Rikard touched the ridges beside the door and the ceil­ing lit up, filling the corridor with a warm amber light. The goons all crouched, their guns aimed at the ceiling, which now glowed uniformly over its whole surface, without any indication of illuminating elements inside.

  "Sorry," Rikard said. He touched the ridges again, a slightly downward stroke, and the light dimmed to deep amber. Gray-shard was watching him, the only one there, besides himself, who had not been surprised. Rikard stroked the ridges upward a bit. The light brightened. Then he turned his headlamp off.

  "Don't do things like that without warning," Denny snapped. She took a deep breath, opened the door opposite the one by which they had come in, stood in the iris and reached around to grope for the dimmer switch on the other side. Her goons were through the door even as the light came on.

  Falyn hesitated by the door. She reached out a finger and delicately played with the ridges of the dimmer switch. "Touch just one," she said, "and nothing happens, but touch two or more..." She did as she spoke, the light in the corridor became almost blindingly bright. She dimmed the switch again. "I sure would like to know what's providing power," she said to Rikard as they followed the others at last.

  The next three rooms were more or less the same, of varying sizes and unfurnished except for the central table and the occa­sional counter with cabinets beneath. The fourth room had only one other door, on the right, and they had no choice but to change direction. The room after that had no door in the direc­tion they wanted to go either, so they went on to the next, which did, and beyond that they entered the end of another short corri­dor.

  The room at the far end of this corridor was quite a bit larger than any they had been in so far, and Sukiro called a halt so they could rest a moment and take their bearings. Majorbank figured they'd come less than a quarter of the way to their objective and had come off to the right about twenty meters.

  Sukiro and Falyn decided to investigate one of the view-screens set in the wall. Every room had had at least one, which made sense, though some had had two, which did not. This screen was like all the others, about fifty centimeters square, set flush with the pale blue wall about one and a half meters from the floor. It was framed by dark blue stripes, which formed a larger square around it, and below it was a white enamel panel, with two rows of square, silver buttons, eight in each row, each with a different symbol in matte black. The speaker grill was immediately to the right of the buttons.

  Sukiro ancLFalyn looked at the device closely, didn't dare touch it. After a moment Rikard went over to join them. "Just push some buttons," Rikard said, "and see what happens."

  "What if we accidentally turn it on?" Sukiro said.

  "Maybe it's already on," Rikard said, "and the raiders are watching us."

  "You'd see it if it were on," Sukiro started to say.

  "Not necessarily," Falyn interrupted. "If the camera were be­hind the screen, it could see us even with the screen dark."

  "I don't think anything's on," Rikard said. He reached out to push one of the top buttons.

  "Keep your hands away," Falyn said. She hesitated a mo­ment. "Let me do it."

  One by one she pushed the buttons on the top row. Nothing happened. Then she started pushing buttons on the bottom row.

  When she got to the rightmost button the screen started to glow with a soft amber light, the same shade as the ceiling but paler.

  "Now what?" Falyn asked. She was breathing heavily.

  "If the on-off switch is on the bottom," Rikard said, "I'd guess the top buttons are for dialing other stations."

  "What the hell are you doing?" Denny demanded. They hadn't heard her come up behind them.

  "Just finding out how this works," Rikard said.

  "Later, Msr. Braeth, later."

  Rikard glared at her, jabbed the rightmost button, and the screen went dark. "After you," he said.

  "Damn straight," Denny said, and strode to the door opposite the one by which they'd come in.

  The room beyond was completely different. It was just big enough to hold them all, the rest of the space being taken up by stacks of shelves along all four walls and freestanding in four rows up the middle. There weren't many things on the shelves, but even Denny couldn't restrain her curiosity this time, with everything in view. Rikard, and even Gray shard, took the opportunity to look some of the objects over.

  A few of the things looked like rounded-cornered cases or canisters, thirty to forty centimeters long and fifteen to twenty centimeters high and deep. Try as they could, they could not figure out how any of them opened. Each one weighed two to three kilograms, but no two weighed the same, and some of them rattled.

  Most of the objects were far more complex, and mystifying, wrapped in a fine, transparent foil. They were all irregularly shaped, and either soft or flexible. They varied from the size of a fist to a few that were larger than the canisters. There were no seams on the wrappings, but Rikard did manage to tear one open.

  The thing inside looked like a bunch of yellow rubber crab legs, organically hinged together in two places, where they were green. The "legs" folded out and back rather stiffly. There were lots of similar packages on the shelves, scattered here and there. After a moment the "crab legs" began to stink and Rikard decided not to open any of the other packages.

  They could see what was inside well enough, and could make no sense of them in any case. Some of the objects looked like thick noodles, or wads of wet grass, or discus shapes with rubbery spines along the edge. On one shelf was a series of six similar objects, each one a variation on the next, like a combination between a loaf of bread and a jackknife, with thick rubbery "blades" opening on all sides of the quarter-meter "loaf," except that the whole thing was made of what looked like soft
plastic. The blades could be opened even inside the wrapping, but they didn't stay open, and some of them folded into themselves as well as into the loaf, and one or two of them tele­scoped.

  The three rooms beyond that were more typical, then they came to another transverse corridor, and in the second room beyond that Yansen discovered a semi-oval membrane set into one wall, the flat side against the floor. It was about a meter high and wide, and the covering membrane was quite flexible, with a puckered ring at the center. Yansen prodded at this and the membrane dilated. He put his hand in and the membrane closed around his wrist.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Denny asked.

  "Look at this," Yansen told her. Using both hands he easily stretched the membrane wide enough so that he could shine his helmet flash inside. The space beyond was about two meters deep, and the floor, instead of being milky white, was textured gray. Denny peered in over Yansen's shoulder as he reached in to touch the gray floor with his armored fingers.

  "Feels funny," he said, then looked at his fingertips. The hardened steel was polished flat. "Holy shit." He held his hand up so that Denny, and Rikard and Sukiro, who were right behind her, could see.

  "Kind of a dangerous thing," Sukiro said. She took a prybar from Colder and, while Yansen on one side and Denny on the other held the membrane open as far as it would go, reached in with it and probed at the gray floor. The end of the prybar seemed to sink into the flooring. When she took the prybar out they saw that the end had been cut off and polished smooth.

  "Save it for later," Sukiro said. She handed the prybar back to Colder. "Sorry about that," she said.

  "I'll keep it as a souvenir."

  After that they all kept their hands off things.

  It was shortly after passing what Majorbank estimated was the halfway point that Rikard began to feel more cheerful. He couldn't remember feeling sad, but there was no denying that he was happier now than he had been. Falyn must have noticed a change in his behavior, because she glanced at him and cocked an eyebrow in question.

  Rikard shrugged. "I just feel good."